Video transcription

The reconstruction of the Intelligible World as an autonomous and subsistent dimension constitutes the original nucleus of Western philosophical thought. This reflection begins with the interpretation of an exceedingly ancient content whose origin—though often ascribed to the East—is rooted in a common heritage of humanity, for it is the product of a Synthetic Logic that emerges through a process of Structural Deduction. We cannot pursue here this consonance between East and West; its fundamental lines are set out in Fritjof Capra’s seminal work, The Tao of Physics.

The content of this most ancient metaphysical doctrine, initially transmitted by a priestly élite under the name Sophia, is removed from the cultic sphere and reintroduced by Pythagoras in secular form within the first community he founded. The great reputation won by Pythagoras places the philosophical communities of Magna Graecia at the centre of acute political tensions. As Iamblichus tells us, the Pythagoreans become targets of aggression, and those who survive the massacres and devastation inflicted by their enemies are scattered across the world.

A portion of the ancient doctrine escapes anti-Pythagorean fury thanks to the writings of Philolaus of Croton, which fortuitously come into Plato’s hands. The Dialogues, dense with allusions, preserve fragments of it; yet after the deaths of Plato, Speusippus and Xenocrates, the ancient doctrine dissolves, deprived of its logical nucleus, condensed in a carefully guarded diagram never publicly displayed.

The World of Ideas-Forms, to which Plato alludes in an enigmatic manner, becomes elusive and mysterious—an object to be accepted on faith, or rejected outright. The most emblematic rejection of Plato’s Realist Idealism is expressed by Aristotle, who refuses the thesis that the Intelligible World could subsist beyond the individual who thinks it, thereby claiming it as of human origin. For him, Plato’s Ideas-Forms would be no more than the outcome of a process of conceptual abstraction carried out by a mind attempting to reduce the Sensible World to categories.

The emergence of a position antithetical to Realist Idealism, following Aristotle, opens a long hermeneutic season, in which Platonic texts undergo countless attempts at exegesis, deconstruction, and integration. Thus begins, officially, the descending parabola of Metaphysics within Philosophy. Ernst Cassirer writes: “To describe the struggle between Platonism and Aristotelianism in the full extent and depth of its conceptual contrasts, would be to write the history of modern thought. This conflict exerts a determining and decisive weight even within the most original productions of modern Philosophy.”

Centuries will pass before we encounter thinkers capable of recovering and renewing the spirit of original Metaphysics. Plotinus in Rome, Iamblichus in Syria, and Proclus in Athens reconstruct the Intelligible World as an articulated system, seeking to deduce and formalise the foundations of Synthetic Logic. In this work of reconstruction, multiple sources overlap: oral teachings, parallel traditions, and symbolic reinterpretations. This research is brought to a halt by the advent of monotheistic Religions.

With the expansion of Christianity, metaphysical Unity—one of the two structural principles of the ancient doctrine—is identified with the personal God of Scripture. The Fathers of the Church convert the Platonic Ideas-Forms into “attributes” of a “Supreme Subject”, transfiguring them in an anthropomorphic direction. Theology, whilst drawing heavily on Plato’s Timaeus, performs a reversal: from an impersonal mechanism governed by Necessity, Ananke, Reality becomes the outcome of a divine plan that promises otherworldly rewards to the faithful of its Church. The Middle Ages are marked by this shift, which infuses metaphysical speculation with devotional and affective impulses, transforming Metaphysics into Religion.

Scholasticism, born of the Aristotelian tradition, fixes a fracture: on one side Theology, the domain of faith and authority; on the other, Analytic Logic, reduced to a binary mechanism of thought, founded upon the principles of Identity and Non-Contradiction. Philosophy is compelled to move within this narrowed and stifling framework.

With Humanism and the Renaissance, a new season opens. Under the influence of Islamic culture and Jewish mysticism, certain philosophers attempt to sever the identity between the metaphysical Monad and the God of Scripture, generating an inevitable tension with orthodoxy. Churchmen respond with increasing rigour, and some thinkers—such as Amalric of Bena or Giordano Bruno—suffer its dramatic consequences.

Léon Robin writes: “At the end of the 14th century and in the 15th, one begins openly to shake off the ‘tyrannical yoke’ of Aristotle, and to seek the revelations of Plato. Florence is the centre of this awakening with Cosimo de’ Medici, and under the enthusiastic influence of Gemistos Plethon, the Platonic Academy is established, of which Marsilio Ficino will be the animating spirit and the master. From that moment onwards, the current will not, in fact, cease to grow and to diversify.”

The more pervasive the Church’s dominion over culture becomes, the more Pythagorean–Platonic thought, spokesman for the ancient pagan world, is stigmatised as deviant, subversive, and therefore marginalised. It is forced to develop informally and underground, fragmenting into esoteric doctrines such as Hermetism, which attempt to keep the tradition alive within an atmosphere saturated with mystery and sacrality, to the point of reaching outcomes described as “counter-fideistic”.

Some authentically synthetic thinkers, such as Nicholas of Cusa, adopt subtler strategies. The concept of learned ignorance enables him to preserve Pythagorean Metaphysics without colliding head-on with dogma. Yet this process of marginalisation and withdrawal into restricted circles, whilst ensuring the survival of Pythagorean and Platonic thought, undermines its logical discipline. Metaphysics persists in a ghostly form, deprived of its foundation: the inferential mode of Structural Deduction is replaced by mystical intuition, by the authority of the exegete, and by appeals to “divine inspiration”.

Thus, impatience towards an irrational and dogmatic “metaphysics” grows. With Descartes, the Spiritus Rationalis frees itself from dogma and returns to claim the centrality of human consciousness. This signals a new phase: the birth of Psycho-Logic, which Kant will bring to its systematic culmination.

In the next video, we shall explore the second movement, namely the shift of Philosophy’s attention from Phenomena to Concepts. “To the Principle!”